The Aftermath
by sixpetalpoppy
Summary: The war is over but not for Hermione, while the Death Eaters have been sent away and Hogwarts rebuilt for the next students to come Hermione still hasn't seen the end of her war. Dramione.
1. Chapter 1: Hermione Granger's Next Battl

Disclaimer: I own nothing but a beat up car, this chapter was revised/updated on 16 Feb 2020.

**30 August 1999**

The late August sun was setting beyond the Forbidden Forest, burning like embers as the day died to become night. Hermione Granger sat and watched from the Astronomy Tower, alone save for the owls starting to hunt and the bats leaving their roost.

She was feeling pensive, more so than any soon-to-be-20 year old witch should be, on a summer evening. Despite the feast waiting many floors below her in the Great Hall and her stomach that gurgled with hunger, she couldn't quite tear herself away from the setting sun just yet.

If asked to describe Hermione Granger many of her friends would, without pause, rattle off the defining characteristics of a Gryffindor verbatim. Brave, daring, loyal and adventurous they'd tell you with proud heads held high, for many of her friends were sorted to Gryffindor too.

If pressed further, or asked for evidence of these traits, they'd tell you of her role in the war. How she'd selflessly put Harry Potter, the Greater Good and the wizarding world ahead of her own needs and fought tirelessly for the cause and against the Death Eaters.

Not a single Daily Prophet during the past 15 months had landed on a breakfast table without at least one article singing the praises of the brightest witch of her age. Somehow Skeeter and her associates managed to constantly find new ways to spin her story and accomplishments and the wizarding public lapped it up.

Once the smog of the charms thrown in battle had settled through the halls of Hogwarts Hermione had joined arms with her fellow students, her teachers and fellow citizens to rebuild the school and home of so many to its former glory.

If you'd asked Hermione Granger to describe herself she'd have told you she was, without a doubt, bloody exhausted.

In the space of 15 hectic months everything Hermione had worked for and wanted for 6 long years had fallen into place; the war had reached a chaotic conclusion and the aftermath was sudden. Kingsley Shacklebolt didn't pause before taking his rightful place as Minister of Magic and initiating the trials of the surviving Death Eaters before the last memorial service for the fallen had finished.

Kingsley had assured Hermione many a time that her presence wasn't necessary at each and every trial of the surviving Death Eaters and that the memories she provided the Wizengamot were more than sufficient; she, however, disagreed. If her memories were to be used as evidence then it was her intent to attend the court in support of them.

"I disagree with testifying by memory alone, Kingsley, I'm sorry but I can't help it," she'd argued. "How can a memory sufficiently share to the Wizengamot the nuances, the pain and the emotional impact of a situation? My thoughts, my feelings, my interpretation isn't shared in a memory - just the moment, bare and ready for one's own conclusions. I should be there to give context and conviction to what they see before them".

It took Harry agreeing with her for Kingsley and Arthur to relent. When he too argued that he wanted to support his memories, knowing how well things could be misinterpreted, the pair accepted that this battle they fought was a losing one. Harry Potter, never one to forget a debt owed, particularly insisted he be given the chance to support Narcissa Malfoy in her trial and, after slight protest, even spoke to Rita Skeeter about the pivotal role she played in the demise of Voldemort in an effort to sway public opinion.

Ron, unlike his friends, chose to hand over the vials of his memories and retire to the Burrow, not wanting to relive the trauma of the war and decisions he'd made. When Hermione had asked, and he knew she would, he'd given her honesty. "I have to live with my choices, Hermione, but I don't have to relive them every damn day".

Instead Ron had chosen to spend the aftermath in the warm embrace of the remaining Weasleys, nursing the wounds that the Death Eaters had wrought upon them. The Weasley family needed to heal and their losses were still too new. Hermione struggled to find her place in the family, she wanted to mourn with them, feeling the loss of Fred sorely but whenever she went to the burrow she found herself on the edge looking in at a tight unit with no space for her.

Her war-time romance with Ron had rapidly fizzled into nothing in the weeks after the final battle. It appeared that, without the threat of Death Eaters busting through the tent pegs ay any given moment, their frantic need for each other was non-existent. They parted mutually and with relief, though there were a few awkward glances in the first weeks after. The only person truly upset with their split had been Molly who'd always hoped for another daughter in Hermione.

Percy, like Hermione, had also struggled greatly to define his place in the Weasley Family and it was he who approached the Astronomy Tower that evening looking to round her up for the meal awaiting them.

"Thought I'd find you up here," he said as he leant his forearms on the balustrade beside her.

"Mmm," she replied. "Does it make sense that I'm not quite ready for the next phase? Tomorrow the returning and new students come back, we've finished here, we finished weeks ago really… It all changes again tomorrow and I just want to savour it".

"I'm not sure you're savouring the right thing, but I know what you mean. This time was special, Hermione; giving Hogwarts back to the next generation, but we'll always have it".

"Alright for you to say, Perce. You're staying on-"

She smirked as he immediately looked uncomfortable for the first time that evening, "you're not supposed to know that yet," he told her haughtily. "Minerva's announcing it this evening".

"Ah, well a portrait told me. Congratulations Professor Weasley, I'm sure you'll make History of Magic..."

"As dull as ever?" He replied with a wry laugh.

"Well, it can't get worse than it's been!" She told him as they laughed together.

He was a different man than the one she'd known mere months ago when she'd still find him sobbing in the dark of the Great Hall, begging Merlin to tell him why Fred had been taken and not him, the one who didn't belong.

He'd thrown himself into the rebuilding of Hogwarts instead, supporting Professor "what have I told you, Percy, call me Minerva" McGonagall in her quest to reopen the school before the decade, and century, was out.

The pair of them, and so many others, had found out just how therapeutic it could be to rebuild the building that had been destroyed. Over the past year if she wasn't buried under beaurocracy in the bowels of the ministry, then Hermione was, most likely, at Hogwarts. She'd discovered very quickly how cathartic she found it, after a day in the dock, to return to the beloved castle and be a part of the slow effort to repair the damage done.

Each and every night for the past year she'd gone to bed tired and barely able to _scourgify_ herself before she fell to the bed, sometimes not even getting beneath the covers before she slept. She'd awake with a satisfied ache in her muscles that grew more defined by the day, magical manual labour was proving to be an incredibly effective way to chase the realities of the aftermath away.

On the 9th May, a week after the first stoic and dignified mourning of the Battle of Hogwarts, Minerva had summoned the workers to the Great Hall for the first feast in the walls of the newly restored Great Hall. Only one of the long tables was laden with the impressive display of food, made by the house elves who'd refused to abandon the castle. Informal and plentiful the eclectic team of students, teachers, parents and the wizarding public were able to relax for the first time in a fortnight, though they were helped along by the jugs of Elven wine and butterbeer.

Minerva had waited for the right moment to make her announcement and, once their bellies were full and their hearts much lighter, she stood to address the crowd. "This news, that I'm so incredibly proud to announce tonight, won't come as a surprise to many but nevertheless it's time to declare it to the world: Hogwarts will reopen and welcome students to her halls once more on 1 September 1999.

This couldn't have been achieved without each and every one of you. We've worked so hard together to put the past behind us and rebuild a school for the future. Each and every one of you will always have a place at Hogwarts should you need it".

The ministry, understandably, were impatient to draw a line in the uncertainty and terror that had surrounded the wizarding world through the past years. And so, as quickly as the trials began, they came to a close. Over a mere 15 months the Death Eaters were tried and punished swiftly and mercilessly with sentences that we deemed harsh by a quiet few but fair by a vocal many.

The final trials coincided with the last brick being put back in place at Hogwarts and a plaque installed in the Great Hall in tribute to the many who'd fallen in the defence of the school and the children within, including Professors Burbage, Snape and Dumbledore.

Hermione, like Percy, had also been offered a role at Hogwarts by Minerva in, of all places, the library. Irma Pince, having spent the past thirty years tirelessly policing the stacks, had been greatly effected by the war and felt a need to contribute more to improve the literacy of wizarding Britain before they attended Hogwarts. To do this to the best of her ability she wanted to step back to a part time role to better dedicate her time to her new cause. Both Irma and Minerva's first choice for a replacement steward of the tomes had been Hermione, who'd shown such care in restoring the magical books of Hogwarts.

Naturally Hermione was drawn to the job, it was a perfect fit for her and a great opportunity to not only shape the young minds coming through the doors tomorrow morning but to help her work out her next steps. She worried though that she'd settle too easily into the rhythms of the school and that she hadn't fully reconciled her own experiences of the war yet.

Kingsley, as Minister, had also offered her a job in the department of magical law enforcement but every time she thought about the job, thought about the idea of losing herself in paperwork and getting beaten down by the repeated monotony of bureaucracy, it scared her and every since the offer she'd looked for any chance to turn it down.

Working so closely with him it was hard not to see Percy Weasley's time at the ministry as a cautionary tale and she knew all too well how difficult she would find trying to change the system from within should she want to.

The reality was that Hermione was bloody exhausted and, now that she'd stopped burying herself in the trials and construction she'd busied herself with so keenly, she had to face up to the thing she'd spent the past few years avoiding.

It had been so easy to avoid the reality of her situation when she could keep herself busy. When she was too tired to think at the end of the day she could avoid it. When she had been running through the woods with Death Eaters on her tail there was no time to dwell.

But for the past week a sense of dread had been bubbling like a cauldron in the small of her stomach and the simmer was not abating, in fact she felt it could boil over any day.

As she descended the stairs of the tower, following Percy towards the smell of a freshly cooked supper, she knew that the pit of dread could only mean one thing. The next phase was about to begin and it was time to face up to the single hardest decision of her life. It was time for her to take responsibility, time to rise to a new challenge and time to fight her next battle.

It was time for Hermione Granger to find her parents.

Hi! And thanks for reading, reviewing and doing all that other stuff that fuels all fanfic writers! I'm on Tumblr if you want to ask me anything user: afoxesportion and any beta readers interested please get in touch!


	2. Chapter 2: Draco Malfoy is an Innocent

**4th March 1999**

After nine hard months in Azkaban, following 3 years of sharing a breakfast table with the self proclaimed 'Lord' Voldemort, and a lifetime of his father's fanaticism the concept of 'freedom' had become quite novel to Draco Malfoy.

"Have I ever been free?" He wondered, as he sat (without any other option available to him) strapped in a hard chair, his arms and legs restrained by chains, the dark mark glaring up between the links of metal. He sat before the watching Wizengamot who were deliberating before they announced a verdict that would determine his entire future.

He didn't expect to survive this and so, when the Chief Warlock stood to address the court room, it wasn't hope that bubbled in his stomach but dread. "There has been much deliberation with my peers over the evidence and fate of the accused stood before us today.

Draco Malfoy has caused great suffering, but he has also suffered greatly and, despite his actions, we the Wizengamot of Great Britain believe his hand to have been forced. We shall then declare to you, the people of Wizarding Great Britain, our verdict: Draco Malfoy is not guilty".

It felt like the young Malfoy had been struck in the chest as he gasped at the verdict. His gasp, so loud over the hushed whispers, seemed to suck every atom of air from the room leaving his lungs wanting as he struggled to juggle the verdict and base functions. The chains that held him tight were the only thing to stop him from falling out of his chair when black spots danced before his eyes and he fainted.

The trial had been bad. Perhaps even comparable to a creative torture; one that had been devised to make him relive and experience each and every horrific act he'd been complicit in throughout his past. Not content to just explore his role alongside Voldemort they studied his childhood: the conditioning, the pureblood mania, his father.

For the first time in his life he'd shown humility and willingly. He had dropped his walls, not that he could have resisted their prying, and invited them through his mind where it was sacked and trampled as they explored every sordid detail. He co-operated fully and to the best of his ability, hiding nothing, not his teenage lusting over Granger at the Yule Ball or his tears to Myrtle.

Yes, the trial had been bad, but it didn't compare to time spent in the crumbling hellmouth of Azkaban. His nine months, though they felt more like years, in Azkaban had been a relentless and constant test of his resolve and sanity - something he'd been hardly holding on to before imprisonment. With no dementors remaining to guard the prison, subduing and sapping each and every last happy thought and emotion from them, the rapid road to insanity amongst the prisoners had become a loud and constant thing.

The screaming, he'd decided after a mere week within the walls, was the least excruiciating part of the decent. Everyone screamed, it was part and parcel of their lot, an accepted inevitability of their stay but one could only scream so much before one's voice went hoarse with the effort and the scream settled as a dry rasp hardly heard over the crashing of the North Sea.

The facilities, as he fondly called the two buckets in the corner of the room, were simple and would not break him. There were expectations of him, as a Malfoy, to sneer and snap, crumble and complain when life's luxuries were taken from him like a petulant child punished. This may, he'd concede, have been true of him once in his early years at Hogwarts but now, after sharing his home with Death Eaters, Draco Lucius Malfoy gave no fucker the satisfaction of seeing him squirm because he hadn't had a bath.

There were those, trapped in their granite cages, that the dirt fascinated and so their bucket of 'clean' water would go untouched. When the only changing thing in a cell is the layers of dirt you amass and all their minute and subtle changes then the dirt becomes a source of entertainment. Though maybe entertainment was too strong a word, confined to their cells with no socialisation the dirt becomes a companion: a new friend with a different story every day.

Some spoke to it, nurturing and cultivating the smallest patch; some teased and fought with the one thing they could control in their deadened existence. Draco had heard, just two holes away, the day-long arguments of one man and the speckle of grime on the side of his knee until one day he rushed a guard and was silenced for good.

The dirt broke many, but not Draco. He washed meticulously with the clean water, keeping as clean as he could and the dirt at bay. It wasn't just for fear of insanity either, a slow and calculated wash could kill the hours as well as the germs floating through the prison.

The food was straight up awful and calling it 'food' was surely an insult to someone. The daily deliveries of just enough nutrition to ensure they didn't die too quickly was insignificant. They were served the same, day in day out, and it was meaningless; just another form of sensory deprivation designed to make the hell worse. Another luxury he wasn't afforded, he would yawn at the predictability of it all if it occurred to him.

No, it wasn't the screaming, the facilities, the food or the dirt that pushed you over the edge in Azkaban. It was the rumours and whispers that killed you. Rumours spread through the corridors of Azkaban like wildfire and every day a new rumour threatened to raze their minds. Each became a susurrus of torment that whistled on the breeze through the open and exposed windows, charmed to keep them just warm enough to prevent pneumonia.

It wasn't always big things that travelled on the wind either, not that they needed to be, and the tiny rumours would take a hold of the minds of the prisoners so easily. Sometimes just a hint of weather was enough to cause a spiral of torment within the Azkaban prisoners. "They say there's going to be snow," would bounce from cell to cell like a pinball hitting every bell and bumper in its case, accumulating a frenzy as the stakes and score got higher until "The ministry's brewed up a snowstorm to come and wipe out the prison, the guards have gone. We'll die here".

Everything spiralled, everything escalated and, with so little in the cells to engage with, everything… became everything to them.

His mother had been tried first, back in June, the first to sit in the chains that flexed so tightly. Narcissa, like her son, welcomed them to her mind and the shit show that was her adult life lay before them. Freedom was granted to her, following her co-operation and a shiny testimony from Harry Potter, something she accepted (like everything) with the grace and poise she was known for.

He didn't, from his cell, begrudge her her freedom. All he had ever wanted was his mother free and clear from the dark and twisted residents of Malfoy Manor, his father included. She had freedom, she had opportunity for the first time in her life and she could go whether she pleased.

First, she returned to Azkaban as a visitor to her son. The guards treated her as little more than a prisoner but this was to be expected. There'd been no difference when she first visited Lucius during his first stint on the island, it was the way of the place. The simple idea that if you were to be rude enough to the visitors that they wouldn't want to come back neglecting the prisoner's further was hardly a secret.

She sat at the table with her hands before her, they weren't to touch - no physical contact between inmate and their 'guests' - but she desperately wanted to hold the face of her son between her hands and will his torment away.

"Mother," he said in greeting once the guard had retreated to the wall to glare throughout their brief alloted time.

"My son, you look well," she replied, her eyes dancing with humour he'd rarely seen in the past ten years. His mother had always been a different women without his father around.

A choke of laughter escaped him before he could restrain it, "thank you, I'm sure it's the sea air, so good for your health I've heard".

Her eyes softened as she watched him make light of it, try to protect her as if she'd not spent her own time there in confinement. "It won't be long, Draco. I'm told it won't be a year. They're getting the trials done as quickly as possible, even if they choose to make you stew and wait for your time, you just need to hold it together a little longer".

"I'm doing fine, Mum," he assured her and they both knew he was lying. "Compared to the Manor over the past 3 years I may as well be sat in the Leaky with a butterbeer". This she knew had a layer of truth to it. Malfoy Manor had been hard, on both of them, from the constant dark magic and energies to the sheer volume of cruel people revelling in wickedness at all hours. It had been a torment to exist there alongside it all.

'Not long' it turned out, was 8 and a half months later. With little warning and no time to prepare he was collected one morning before the slop and his daily buckets were delivered. His pride burned with shame as he was presented to the Wizengamot in such an uncouth state.

His cheeks burnt as the shackles on the chair weaved up his limbs, cold like Nagini and twice as strong. As he was presented before the wizarding world he struggled to fearlessly raise his head and meet the eyes of the court, as he'd been taught by his father. How could he when he was so terrified and had gone so long without social interaction?

They read his charges and he fought to keep the tremors at bay, it wasn't that he wasn't aware of the reality facing him, but when hearing them one after another he could see no end to the living hell he was subject to.

In the moments of rest, when he wasn't being hounded for answer upon answer, he obsessed on one word in particular that his ministry assigned defence repeated over and over, a word echoed by Hermione Granger herself, "Draco Malfoy is an innocent".

Innocence. It wasn't for him to define (thank Merlin), the Wizengamot were more than happy to do that, but surely innocence was beyond him. He was culpable, surely. A victim of the xenophobia of his father, cursed by hundreds of years of toujours pur, but still undeniably complicit in his crimes with the Death Eaters.

Draco wants to be innocent, if that counts for anything, a realisation that shakes him the first time he stumbles on it. He wants to be innocent not to be free of Azkaban, though the perks are undeniable, but to be able to move on. To take the weight of the burdens off his shoulders and become a new man with a second chance. He'd dearly love a second change.

He doesn't believe he can have innocence though, and night after night he turns the word over in his mind trying to find a place for himself in its pure and clean definitions. He can strive to be innocent, he decides, but even if the Wizengamot absolve him he'll always see himself and fine what lies before him wanting. He can be declared an innocent but what he wants, the best he can hope for, is redemption and the chance to redefine himself as the man he wishes he had the strength to become.

"We shall then declare to you, the people of Wizarding Great Britain, our verdict: Draco Malfoy is not guilty," he hears and he faints.

When he's roused, by a sympathetic wizard in the plum robes of the court, he measures the verdict in his mind and finds he prefers it. "Not guilty," he finds less pressure in the words. Unlike Granger's "innocent" this is something he can aspire to, something he believes he can manage.

And so he finds himself a free man. No longer detained at the ministry's pleasure he returns to the Manor, for lack of an alternative. His mother, he knows, is in France; she avoided the trial to spare him the comparisons of their trials in the papers and courts.

"No need, Draco, to remind them of the number of Death Eaters in the family, willing or not," she'd told him on one of her short visits.

He stays at the Manor mere hours but long enough to shower and shave before he stuffs a fistful of galleons in the pockets of his muggle clothes. He'd bought the nondescript 't-shirt' and (rather tight if you asked him) jeans in the summer after his fifth year at Hogwarts and hidden them immediately beneath his bed, glamoured to hide their true nature, but ready in case he and his mother needed to run.

He apparates, back to the ministry just 3 hours after leaving, and makes his way to the Department of International Transportation without sparing a glance to the peering eyes in the atrium.

The room is busy and he joins a long queue, glad that the Easter holidays hadn't yet arrived at Hogwarts. He finally takes his place before the witch at the desk and prepares for his first interaction free of incarceration trying to keep the giddy feeling of freedom out of his expression: nobody needs to seem too happy at the ministry, it would be suspicious and just delay things.

"Where to?" Asks the witch, not bothering to look up and engage with him as, he's surprised to find, he so desperately wants. Merlin, he thinks, I must be starved of conversation.

"The furthest place as soon as possible, please".

She huffs a sigh, "Australia. Twenty minutes. 14.03 departure time, 30 galleons, sign here then take a seat".

"Thank you," he tells her as he stacks the galleons on the desk and signs the parchment in front of him, eager to be as far away as 'Australia' as soon as possible.

He doesn't know where, exactly, Australia is. Geography, outside of learning where the most Death Eater sympathetic countries were, wasn't exactly a Malfoy educational staple. In fact, he was rather ignorant of the wider world outside of Britain and the Black estate in France.

He doesn't know where he's going, he doesn't know what it'll be like when he gets there but he does know it's far and it's not here and that is more than enough to satisfy the simple needs of Draco Malfoy.

Notes:

Thank you so much to everyone who's reviewed, favourited etc!


	3. Chapter 3: Choices and Consequences

I've rewritten the first chapter, it's not imperative to reread but it might help.

**31 August 1999**

It was not in the nature of one Miss Hermione Granger to be a messy person. She liked order, organisation and her loose ends neatly tied. She was never quite sure how she'd survived for so long during the war: travelling with two teenage boys and a horcrux in a tent, splinching around the woodland of England left her living in a state of chaos, at best.

Her travels with her best of friends had been a test of her patience, a test of their friendships and had pushed her to the very boundaries of her comfort zone. In the time since she'd regained her assertive grip on the threads that wove through her life and she found herself able to breathe easier again, knowing it was all in hand.

In that vein she couldn't up and leave on a trip, of undetermined length, to Australia without tying up a few of her current and outstanding loose ends. She had five days ahead of her to put her affairs in order and she knew that explaining her decision to Harry and Ron, protective as they were, would be just the first hurdle ahead of her.

At the end of the war with no school to return to, no parental homes for Hermione or Harry, and a collective aversion to tents, the trio moved into the grim old place Sirius had left him. Number 12 hadn't changed during their 'travels', upon their return they found it as depressing as ever with Walburga wailing at anyone who'd listen; but they threw open the windows, filled each room with laughter and made a home of the house.

Mrs Weasley wasn't entirely happy with the arrangement, her last son leaving home to shack up with the pureblood portrait from hell, and she would frequently bustle through the floo bemoaning their inability to fend for themselves, checking they'd stocked the larder and armed with a casserole or two 'just in case'.

That evening, as the hot August sun set on a sweltering London, the trio tucked into the cold leftovers of a roast chicken from the day before; casting cooling charms between mouthfuls of food and chilled butterbeer.

"Merlin, I'll be glad when this heatwave's buggered off already, is all of London like this?" Ron asked as he pressed the cool glass to his forehead, condensation muddling with the sweat on his freckled forehead.

"Worse, probably," said Harry who was not as bothered by discomfort as Ron. "Plus the muggles don't have these cooling charms to take the edge off either".

Ron groaned at the thought, "how do they even survive this? It's oppressive".

"The Dursley's used to go off to Cornwall for a week when it all got too much, down near the coast, it's cooler there".

Hermione perked up at his mention of the Dursleys, always interested in their bizarre and neglectful guardianship of her friend. "Did they take you with them, Harry?"

"Merlin, no, they left me to it at home. Jokes on them though, i'd stand for hours in front of the empty, open fridge racking up their electricity bill," he told her with a grin.

"We should do that," said Ron thoughtfully.

Both of his friends turned to look at him with bemused faces, "...stand in front of the fridge?" Said Harry. "We've got cooling spells, mate".

"No, don't be a prat. We should go visit Bill and Fleur at Shell Cottage, get some sea air! I'll write him this evening and we'll be dipping our toes in the sea by the end of the week".

Harry was keen, having not had a holiday that didn't involve Hagrid battering down the door before, but Hermione saw an opportunity. "Actually, Ron, I don't think I can go," she told him tentatively.

"No? I'm sure you can break away for a long weekend, Hermione, let your hair down for once-".

"I've decided," she said interrupting him. "I've decided to go to Australia".

"Australia?" asked Harry. "Have you heard something then?"

The boys knew, of course, that she'd started to make enquiries with the Australian ministry about the wellbeing of her parents. Letters had gone back and forth between her and the government officials, each bird pecking her angrily over the distance and none of them bringing answers to her questions.

"No, no news, and I don't think I'm going to get any... You know how it goes, things are never simple and I did too good a job," she told them with a pessimistic huff of laughter. "I think, well I've decided, that I'm going to go to Australia to look for them myself. I think it's time, I need answers and to stop hiding from it".

"Do you need us to come with you?" Harry offered, looking as if he was willing to go back immediately if she just asked.

"No, oh Merlin boys don't be silly. You've got Auror training and Ginny... and I've seen you making eyes at Daphne, Ron, you really should act on that already".

Ron had the dignity to blush but he didn't protest, he'd met Daphne Greengrass when visiting Percy at Hogwarts armed with a 'Molly Weasley special' for lunch. In the weeks since he'd make excuses to visit and she'd picnic as close as possible to the Weasleys without intruding.

"You can't go it alone, you don't know what you'll find, anything could happen Hermione," said Harry sternly, his Auror training already making itself known.

"Yes, Harry, I know that. I made this mess myself thank you very much".

"That's not what I meant-"

"No, Harry I'm sure it's not but it is the fact of the matter. I sent them away, I packaged them into a neat parcel and sent them off to the other side of the world while I flung myself into a battle they'd never have let me be a part of".

"You had no choice, Hermione".

"Yes, Ron, I did; but I made the right choice. The hard choice, and that choice had consequences. It's time for me to face them".

"But you shouldn't go alone, I don't like it," Harry said scowling.

"I'll write, and I'm just a portkey away, honestly. I need to do this for myself and by myself. Even if I can't fix them… I need this closure".

"When do you leave?" asked Ron. "How long will you even be gone, Hermione?"

"I scheduled the portkey earlier, I leave in 5 days - on Sunday - and I don't know. It could take weeks, it could take months… It's a bit of a blind mission, I'm afraid. I sent them to Perth… That's where I'm heading but, if they've moved on… I don't know. Truly. Can I leave my things here though? In my room if it's not too much trouble?"

"Merlin, Hermione, for the brightest witch of our age you sure are thick sometimes, Hermione. Of course you can, the fourth floor bedroom will always be a home if you need it," Harry told her, eyes twinkling.

**1 September **

Turning down a role working at the Ministry of Magic was easier than Hermione thought it would be. She'd found Kingsley in his office, just a wall away from the floor of witches and wizards with their heads bent to the desks before them, scribbling away on parchment frantically.

Nevertheless he tours her through the department and, despite the merciless hard work she sees in each cubicle, the glitter and appeal to her is undeniable. Maybe it's the 'adult' environment, or just the smell of ink reminding her of simpler times. Before the war reached its climax she'd have killed for this environment and this had been what she aspired to.

Now older, and maybe wiser, she had her doubts about the ministry career path. Would she really have an impact? Could she make positive change? Was it even worth it? She looked at Arthur and Percy, her main examples of the ministry life, and became filled with doubts.

Arthur had spent years ridiculed as he'd worked for what he believed in, broke his back for what he loved. It was only now, after the war, that he was beginning to make the changes he'd pushed for. Could she face that much disappointment and come out the other side of it whole without a family like the Weasleys to support her?

And Percy? Percy Weasley was a cautionary tale personified and she could see herself becoming him with little difficulty. The boy had burnt out under the strain of his ministry aspirations. He'd quit last year to join the Hogwarts rebuild, subsidising his lack of pay through bartending of all things, taking the most un-Percy job ever. He was a different man though, and happier for it as he started his new job at Hogwarts this week.

In the end she found it easy to say "thank you, Minister, but I find myself needing to go elsewhere right now," to Kingsley. Though he was disappointed and assured her that, if she changed her mind there'd always be a role for her, she knew she'd not return to the building in a professional capacity if she could help it.

**3 September**

As the new term had just begun, and the bustle of new students searching through the halls was still novel, she waited until Friday to return to the castle to visit Minerva McGonagall. She arrived after breakfast, during the first lessons of the day, when the halls would be quietest and her appearance would be less newsworthy. It wasn't uncommon for her presence to still cause a stir, especially at Hogwarts, and she tried to avoid it where possible.

On her way to the headmistress's office she passed the library and couldn't help but peer through the windows on the door. Students were studying already, so early in the term, and she envied them the safe childhoods before them: free to learn without the possibility of a Dark Lord at each corner. Though she hoped they'd never have to make the choices she and her peers had had to in these same halls.

Minerva greeted her with a strong pot of tea, ginger biscuits and a shoulder she hadn't realised she needed to badly to cry upon. As she told the woman across the desk before her her plans, talking her through her decisions and what she might face… It was like a trip to a therapist, something that probably wouldn't go amiss when this was all over.

"I'm sad to see you turn down my offer, Hermione; but, if you don't mind me saying, I think you're making the right choice," the headmistress told her once she'd finished recounting the past few weeks of research and her choices.

Hermione sighed, "it's just, it's the one thing left over. I can put everything else behind me and move on with my life but I'll always want to know what happened to my parents. This question will always be there and I don't think I can live my life without knowing and facing the consequences of my decision".

"It was the right decision, Hermione. You kept them safe by sending them away, you couldn't guarantee that safety in Britain".

"I know, and I'd make the choice again, but I need to know this. I need to find them and check they're safe, maybe even return them to me - if I can," she told her though she was almost scared to hope that she could to repair her relationship with them.

"I'd like to give you something for your travels, I think you'll find use for it in Australia. You may already be familiar with one, from Harry's lessons with Albus? This is a miniature pensieve - a bit more compact and less ornate than his I'm afraid. It could help your parents to remember you if you are able to show them your memories".

Hermione was speechless as she accepted the offer, already cateloguing memories in her mind that she could show her parents. Their trip to France, the day she got her letter, the time she broke her wrist in the playground chasing after a boy who'd stolen her favourite book… It would be invaluable.

"Thank you, Minerva, I can't tell you what this means-"

"You don't need to thank me, Hermione. I understand. And when you come back there'll be a place for you here, if you have need of it. I'm sure Irma will be happy to keep the position open for you".

**4 September**

It was the afternoon before she left for Australia and Hermione was finishing up the last of her packing. Ron had told his parents about Hermione's plans and, that evening - whether she liked it or not - a leaving party of sorts had been planned to wish her well.

She was torn between packing lightly or throwing in as much as possible, though there wasn't room for the kitchen sink as well as the pensieve wrapped securely in an olive green Weasley jumper. Everything that went into her suitcases had to be carried, magic could only ease so much of the load, and who knew how far she'd have to carry them across the continent?

Photographs of her childhood were as essential to help with her parents and, as she sat on her bed ,sifting through the static muggle pictures brought many memories back to her: the good and the bad. It hadn't taken long, she thought sadly, for the wizarding world to cause her to start withdrawing from her parents.

She was as young as 11 when she started making conscious decisions to protect them from her world, it was best not to tell them about the troll, she'd argued. They didn't need to worry.

Then, when a basilisk was slithering through the pipes and she was _so proud_ that she'd stopped it… She'd so nearly told them but had held back, scared that they'd withdraw her from the school and world she loved so dearly. Surely her parents, who'd shuddered at the thought of flying lessons on a broom, wouldn't understand?

By the end of her third year she didn't even skirt around the details anymore: werewolf for a teacher, escaped prisoner in the woods, hippogriffs 'assaulting' students - what was the point in worrying them with what they wouldn't understand?

It wasn't like she didn't see the looks they shared when she was on the edge of a room, they withdrew too and she wasn't the only guilty party. They hadn't wanted to hold their daughter back from the magic of magic so they'd encouraged her to spend more time at school, with her friends, exploring her new world.

They'd pushed each other away and then, to protect them, she banished them further. Hermione knew, when she found them, there'd need to be reparations beyond the memory charms she'd cast upon her parents. She just hoped they'd give her the chance to repair the ties they'd all severed.

Thank you to everyone who's left reviewed, bookmarked, subscribed, and generally motivated me since I last updated! x


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